Bin Laden: The Oprah Interview
"Already, we have questions. Is she therapist or interrogator?"
Stepping onto the living room set from behind a dark curtain, he stoops under an invisible doorway, bending his body like a palm tree in a storm. It's all there, the beard, the turban, the Jesus robes. He's stunning and Oprah can't believe it — she says so.
"I can't believe it," says Oprah. "You're stunning."
And then the real surprise, he's not just alive, he's a talker.
"Thank you so much, Oprah," bin Laden says in the perfect, unplaceable English of a TV newscaster. He clasps his hands. "I try."
"How we're seen, that can be really important. Do you feel seen?" Already, we have questions. Is she therapist or interrogator? A bit of both, her simple khaki fatigues and steel-framed glasses suggest. Either way, she's not wasting a second. It's like Navy SEALs could burst into the room at any moment. And what do we know? Maybe they could.
The big man swirls the question around in his head as he lowers himself onto the leather armchair across from Oprah's. It's a creamy tan number that looks like it cost a thousand bucks. One thing's for sure: He’s a long way from Tora Bora.
"I feel seen now, today," says bin Laden. "I haven't feel seen for a long time."
"You've been out of the public eye for quite a while. As far as the world knew, Osama bin Laden had been dead for over 10 years. I think what we're all wondering is why? Why now? Why break your silence after all this time?"
Bin Laden chuckles, like he can't believe he's back either.
"It wasn't an easy decision, I'll tell you that. The way I think about it, Osama might not need the world, but the world, well, it needs Osama more than ever. The way things have gone... This virus..." He shakes his head. "None of it seems right, you know what I mean?"
Oprah hears the big man, but that doesn't mean she's buying what he's selling. She's thinking about her viewers. She knows an answer like that won't be good enough for us. "And you think you can change that?" she says.
"Well," says bin Laden, "I'd like to try."
“Oprah hears the big man, but that doesn't mean she's buying what he's selling.”
There's the elephant in the room, they can't ignore it any longer. Oprah leans forward, the gym teacher confronting the football star about the drugs in his locker. It's a posture that says, I'm going to hear you out, but no bullshit, pal.
"So," says Oprah, "we have to talk about the attacks. You knew this was coming."
Bin Laden looks up at the ceiling like, oh boy, here we go.
"I'm not here to talk about the past, Oprah. After what I've been through, I can't think like that."
"So you don't take any responsibility?" She pulls out the heavy artillery, a blue notecard that's been sitting on her armrest. "Let me read you some numbers," she says, holding the notecard with both hands. "USS Cole: 17 dead. Bali: 202 dead. 9/11: 2,977."
On that last one, she takes her time, reading out, "two-thousand, nine-hundred and seventy-seven" like she wants him to think about every single person he killed. God, do we love her for that.
The big man shrugs. "If you say so."
Are we going to let him get away with that? Is Oprah? Not a chance.
"I want to make sure I understand you." Hand on her face, squinting. "Are you claiming that the organization you founded, Al Qaeda, didn't carry out the September 11th attacks? Or that almost 3,000 people didn't die that day?"
"Oprah, allow me to explain." The world's most infamous terrorist, who sounded like a petulant teenager just a second ago, takes on a professorial tone. "Here, in front of the whole world, I could say, 'Yes, I'm the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.' I could also say the opposite, that it was all a setup and I'm a patsy, a simple man at the mercy of forces much greater than himself. In the end, it doesn't matter what I say. To the powers that be, I've always been guilty." He's getting all worked up. For the first time, we hear real emotion in his voice. "If I weren't, would your government have sent a dozen armed assassins to my home?"
“Are we going to let him get away with that? Is Oprah? Not a chance.”
"Can you tell me about that day?" Oprah folds her hands, leans back in her chair. Let it out, her body language says, tell us how you really feel.
"Hell," he rasps, with Oprah's permission. "That's what it was, in a word, Hell."
His pain, which should give us glee, only provides discomfort. After what's he's done, all the suffering he's inflicted, a guy like that deserves a lot worse than one lousy day, that's for sure. But part of us, an important part, the one that makes us different from the Osama bin Ladens of the world, sees a human in distress and can't help but feel it, too.
Of course, such puzzlers are for us mortals to wrestle with, not Oprah. She has a job to do.
"I know you're a devout man," she says. "What does 'Hell' mean to you?"
The mass murderer looks ready to cry. "It means your whole world falling apart in an instant. It means going to bed in your home surrounded by loved ones and waking up to fire, smoke, death. It means spending a decade letting your wives, your children, your grandchildren think you've been killed because, for them, the most dangerous thing you could be is alive."
"Tell me, who was it, really, that died that day?"
"Besides my son and several close friends?" Finally, it feels like we're going to learn something. We lean forward in our seats for his answer. "Me. The old Osama died that day."
They break for commercial and we're left sitting there, wondering, what the hell was that, as the car insurance ad that we kind of liked at first plays for the one-millionth time. Seeing bin Laden again, we knew that could really piss us off. What we didn't expect was the frustration. There's still time, though, for our gal to really nail this guy. Just as we start to imagine how Oprah's going to tear him a new one, they're back.
“They break for commercial and we're left sitting there, wondering, what the hell was that?”
"Let's talk about the present," says Oprah. The set is the same but there's a new prop, a tome big enough to squash a tarantula, on her lap. "You have a new book coming out."
"That's right, Oprah," he says. The lanky creep is smiling. Smiling! "And out of everything I've worked on, this is the project I'm most proud of, by far."
"I have to say, I read it and I think it's going to surprise a lot of people." She presses her hand on the book and we try to read the spine, but can't quite make out the title. "It's not what I expected — at all."
"Which might not be such a bad thing! People can say what they want about me, but I'm not naïve: I know there's a lot of baggage that comes with the name 'Osama bin Laden.' Readers are going to have to look past that. I think they can."
"A cookbook, though, why?"
"It's a bit of a funny story, actually." He tilts his head to the side and adjusts himself in his chair. If we didn't know any better, he could be some Hollywood director talking about his latest blockbuster. "A few months into the pandemic, an old friend — I won't say who — called me and said, 'Osama, all this time inside, it's driving me nuts.' I told him, 'You think this is bad, I've been self-isolating for 20 years!' That's when I realized I had a real gift, one I needed to share with people. My exile, as hard as it's been, was ideal preparation for our new normal. And what has sustained me over all this time? What's bin Laden's big secret? It couldn't be simpler, really: it's food."
"There's one passage in particular that really stuck with me." She opens the book. "In the forward to Eat Like a Mujahideen, you write that," reading now, "'in dark times, our faith in the divine can bring us comfort, but the divine has faith in us as well.' Can you tell me what that faith means to you?"
"Well, when I wrote that I was really trying to address one thing: despair. When the obstacles of life are great, despair is a natural response, but what adversity has taught me is that we're a lot stronger than any of us know." On "stronger," bin Laden makes his skinny hands into fists and shakes them. "What's important, what we really have to do, is just keep going. And that's what the Mujahideen Diet is all about."
"Something I noticed about these recipes is what isn't in them. None of them contain meat. Do you consider yourself a vegan?"
"Look, Oprah, I'm not interested in labels. I know firsthand how hurtful they can be. What I'll say is that I'm living proof that a plant-based diet can provide a person with everything they need. And if humanity wants to survive into the next century, we're all going to have to make some changes."
"You're talking about climate change."
Bin Laden nods. "Yes, climate change and the failures of secular government requiring a return to scripture-based Islamic law."
At that, we turn off the TV in disgust. How much of this guy's shit are we supposed to listen to? As we shuffle to the dark kitchen for a glass of water, we ask ourselves what we expected. What we really wanted, what we still want, was to see bin Laden dragged out in chains. Watch him beg for forgiveness that we could refuse with a big Roman emperor's thumbs down. We'll never get anything like that, of course. We've lived long enough now to know that's not how life works.
We stand at the sink holding a glass under the tap. We turn the knob and watch the glass fill until it's full and then just let it keep going. Water flows over the top. Water flows over our hand. Everything keeps moving and maybe that's for the best, we think. When we try to hold onto something, that's when we really suffer. It doesn't matter whether it's good or not, though. That's just how time is.
We dry our hand on a dish towel and try to forget about Osama, about Oprah. Already, they're part of the past. And still there's tomorrow to worry about.